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In what was an otherwise very informative segment discussing the rise in the number of hate groups in America in the wake of the recent shootings in Texas and questions as to whether there are links with a white supremacist prison gang, the audience of MSNBC's The Cycle were treated to conservative co-host S.E. Cupp playing concern troll for right-wing gay-hating fundamentalists, who are none too happy about being designated as hate groups by the SPLC.

As Dave Neiwert discussed here:

When right-wingers got wind of the fact that the Southern Poverty Law Center had designated a number of Religious Right organizations who specialize in rhetorically bashing gays and lesbians as hate groups, they and their allies on the Right came more or less unglued.

Now, rather than face up to the substance of the accusations, they're choosing to demonize the SPLC and their critics. Par for the course for this crowd.

Which is exactly what Cupp did this Wednesday with the SPLC's Heidi Beirich right about mid-way through the segment above:

CUPP: But Heidi, your group, the SPLC, has earned significant criticism over the years for smearing religious and far right groups and ignoring far left hate groups. Shouldn't people be aware of your ideological biases before they take seriously your claims about who they should be afraid of?

BEIRICH: Well, I guess I have to dispute the notion of the question on its... on the premise. The fact of the matter is that we've written about left wing domestic terrorism for almost a decade now coming from animal rights groups, for example, or eco-terrorist types. The criticism we get most heavily from the right-wing are complaints about our listing of groups like the Family Research Council or the American Family Association as anti-gay hate groups.

And the fact of the matter is that those organizations are akin to many of the white supremacist organizations that we list in the sense that they lie about gay folks. White supremacist folks lie about African-Americans.

In the case of something like the Family Research Council, they put out all kinds of defamatory information about how gays are child molesters at higher rates and so on, with the intention of destroying that particular population and making them appear to be lesser. So for us, it is a no-brainer to put groups like that on our hate list.

CUPP: The Family Research Council was actually the victim recently of a hate crime as I'm sure you're aware, when a gentleman stormed the building in D.C. with a bag full of Chick-Fil-A sandwiches.

BEIRICH: Yeah, I mean obviously, we condemn all kinds of violence. It's a horrible thing and what we're all about trying to stop domestic terrorism, violence and anything inspired by hate. That was a disgusting incident.

The wingers over at Brent Bozell's rag, Newsbusters, who I will not link to, were all over this, defending Cupp and blaming the SPLC for the shooting at FRC's headquarters, because of course they want to paint someone who tells the truth about hate groups and the lies they tell as a hate group themselves, as though the work the SPLC is doing is somehow equivalent to the garbage being spread by these so-called Christians. And naturally their comment section was full of attacks on Beirich for her looks, because we all know the most important thing is how you look on TV and not what comes out of your mouth. As Dave noted in his very long post which I linked above, when you can't defend your message, you attack the messenger.

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After the release of Paul Ryan's new budget -- which looked a whole lot like his old budget -- despite the fact that the public rejected their policies when he and Mitt Romney lost the last election -- the panel members on MSNBC's Now with Alex Wagner this Tuesday were asked to weigh in on Ryan's proposal and this latest round of budget negotiations.

There were a lot of good points made about Ryan's ridiculous op-ed in The Wall Street Journal and the fact that he just wants to go after programs that help the poor, the elderly and the most vulnerable in our society and that his "budget" has a lot of numbers that don't add up. Ari Melber then made this point on how Ryan is regarded in political circles:

MELBER: I think Joy is hitting on something really important, which is those are the twin falsehoods, even apart from the hypocrisy of his record. One is, that just because it has numbers in it, doesn't make it a budget, right? My lottery ticket is not a budget. It's just a bunch of numbers on the page. And this thing [...] has a lot of numbers and as everyone has said, doesn't add up. It's more like fan fiction for Ayn Rand than it is a budget. And he's not a deficit hawk. To Joy's point, he's a health care hawk. He is interested in going after every health care program that's basically on the books from Obamacare, as you just articulated, to Medicaid, the program that is the most important for poor people, who need help and also for our society, because when we use medicine, preventative care for poor people, it actually saves all of us money, so it's good on both moral and efficiency terms and that's what's so frustrating here. I think Washington has called him serious for so long, they're over invested in treating this fake charade like it's a budget.

Katrina Vanden Heuvel followed up very nicely on Melber's points just a little bit later in the segment.

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After watching the better part of a couple of days of coverage on this tragic school shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in CT, I was glad to see at least one show on television where there was a discussion about the fact that what happened there, and the trauma that those children and their families are going through right now, is an all but too common occurrence which is sadly all too familiar to Americans living in our inner cities across the country.

Whether it's Chicago, or New Orleans or the other big cities across the country facing high crime rates, far too often the violence has been glossed over and ignored to the point by our national media, that it's just considered acceptable or something we're expected to live with.

As Melissa noted, to date Chicago has suffered at least 425 gun-related homicides in 2012 as of Dec. 14. The Huffington Post has more on that story here: Chicago Homicides Reach 400 This Year, City Turns To Twitter For Ideas To End Violence. And 117 of those victims this year alone were under the age of 21.

And in her home town of New Orleans, we've had 174 murders, most of which are gunshot deaths and in Los Angeles, there have been 512 homicides recorded for the year, and 75 percent of those deaths resulted from gunshot wounds.

HARRIS-PERRY: These are the gun related homicides that get treated as routine -- tragic, but expected. And yet, they need to be included when we talk about Newtown, CT, because their victims are just as real.

The Nation's Ari Melber followed with this:

MELBER: So while we understand exactly how terrible this is and why the story of it and the way it happened is so dramatic and we're rushing to it and the President's speaking to it, it's also true as a policy matter that if 27 people dying is something that connotes the President's attention or our attention and action, well then every day is this day, as you were saying and all around the country.

As Michael Eric Dyson noted, President Obama did bring up those in Chicago during his statement following this most recent shooting and made this important point:

DYSON: The reality is, we've become accustomed to believing that little black and brown kids and poor white kids in various spots across our landscape are doomed to this kind of violence by this... we are surprised it happened here. It's not supposed to happen here.

Which means by implication, that it's supposed to happen there, in Detroit, or Oakland, or California, in LA and the like. And I think that's the tragedy here.

As Harris-Perry rightfully noted a bit later in the segment, she just wants the same level of outrage when you're seeing these kids in our inner cities having their childhoods taken away from them with the violence that they are growing up around as a part of their daily lives as we've seen from these mass shootings that garner so much national attention in the media.

I hope if there is an ounce of good that comes out of this shooting, it's that conversations like this one are more common where we're talking about what we can do to put a stop to gun violence along with a host of other topics that are all interwoven with the same subject and those are not just gun control and gun violence, but mental health, providing adequate health care for all of our citizens, education, poverty, our social safety nets and just what kind of country we're allowing way too many of our children to grow up in.

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We've got stories that continue to come out about voter suppression everywhere from Arizona, to Colorado, to Pennsylvania to you name it, and stories like this one just coming out this week -- Florida 'Glitch' Wipes Out 1000 Early Votes In Black Area.

And this recent news from Ohio where their Secretary of State Jon Husted is doing his best to become the next Katherine Harris or Ken Blackwell -- Last-Minute Ohio Directive Could Trash Legal Votes And Swing The Election.

But never mind all that. If people don't like it that the Republicans are doing their best to keep them from voting or their votes from being counted, well that's too bad according to Mitt Romney's number one neocon fan-girl -- Wash. Post's Jennifer Rubin Dismisses Voter Suppression Concerns As "Sour Grapes".

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Lawrence O'Donnell played what I thought was a telling clip from a radio interview with Ann Romney yesterday. The complete sense of entitlement is galling in the extreme. We're "lucky" to have Mitt Romney running for President?? Shut the front door.

“Stop it. This is hard. You want to try it? Get in the ring. This is hard. And, you know, it’s an important thing that we’re doing right now and it’s an important election and it is time for all Americans to realize how significant this election is and how lucky we are to have someone with Mitt’s qualifications and experience and knowhow to be able to have the opportunity to run this country.”

MSNBC's Krystall Ball called the Romney campaign a "complete disaster", while The Nation's Ari Melber called Romney "a defective product" that no amount of marketing can help.

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After Dylan Ratigan's fawning interview with Andrew Breitbart yesterday, he got some push-back from his buddy Cenk Uygur who he helped get on the air at MSNBC in the first place about allowing someone that fundamentally dishonest come on the air and pretend like he had any interest in muckraking or going after corporate America or Wall Street.

Cenk is exactly right. The only people Breitbart goes after are the powerless and minorities with his so-called "sting operations" and highly edited tapes. What he forgot to mention or didn't get a chance to get in edgewise between Ratigan and the other panel members interruptions was Breitbart's ties to the Koch Brothers and the fact that the so-called "tea party" is nothing but an astroturf rebranding effort by Republicans to get the Bush stink off of the word Republican and for them to try to erase how disastrous their governing policies were when they were driving the economy into a ditch from our memory banks.

Ratigan should be ashamed of himself for that interview with Breitbart yesterday, but it looks like he's going to dig in and defend his actions instead. You can try to revise history all you want Mr. Ratigan, but you in no way held Breitbart's feet to the fire on anything during that little love-fest you had with him yesterday afternoon.

Media Matters did a nice job of breaking down that atrocity of an interview by Ratigan at their blog here -- Dereliction Of Duty: Dylan Ratigan Demonstrates How Not To Interview Andrew Breitbart.

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Former Oklahoma Rep. J.C. Watts wants us to believe that the Koch brothers funded astroturf Republican re-branding effort is one, grass roots, and two, that it started with the followers of Ross Perot and Howard Dean. I don't think so J.C. If there's anyone you could say the "movement" was high jacked from, it's Ron Paul.

Sadly neither Dylan Ratigan or Ari Melber bothered to point out to Rep. Watts that it's pretty unlikely that there are very many of if any of Howard Dean's former supporters that are out there with those teabaggers protesting. The "Tea Party" protesters are the far right wing of the Republican party and some Libertarians. They're not liberals that supported Howard Dean.

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Carlos Watson talks to The Nation's Ari Melber about the growing influence of the online community on politics and the potential for reverse fundraising to make sure there are primary challengers when candidates don't support progressive causes.

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Ari Melber and Joe Watkins square off on MSNBC over the comments recently made by Karl Rove accusing Joe Biden of lying about his conversation with George Bush. I think Melber hits the nail on the head as to what they're doing.

Melber: What you have here are Bush's aides attacking Barack Obama and Joe Biden here on security and it's really disgusting. What they've been doing is trying to bet on another attack. And Dick Cheney of course said well we're less safe and then we've got Karl Rove.... (crosstalk)

You had Cheney saying we're less safe and you have Rove attacking Biden. And what you also have on the same track here is a lot of serious reports about torture and abuse at Guantanamo and what they're trying to do is politicize all this and keep all of us distracted talking about who's a liar and who attacked instead of keep our eye on the ball. You had the Red Cross report out this week saying that the Bush administration tortured at Guantanamo. That's what Dick Cheney's nervous about.

I agree with him. Rove speaks and the talking heads fall right in line and "report" on it all day long as though there's nothing else to talk about. Rove has absolutely no credibility but the main stream media is more than willing to fill their air time with his talking points as though they're valid. Rove is planning on the media continuing to do that in the event we are attacked. My guess is he'll get his wish.